Mozilla is about to shake up the smartphone industry

Mozilla is about to shake up the smartphone industryBy Ed Oswald2012-02-27

While smartphones are commonplace in the developed world, market penetration in developing countries remains poor. Mozilla aims to change that, and is leaning on two international wireless carriers to make that happen. Both Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom are pledging varying degrees of support for its Boot-to-Gecko (B2G) initiative.

Boot-to-Gecko is Mozilla's browser-based mobile operating system. It uses Web standards like HTML5 at its core peppered with borrowed code from the Android operating system. The end result is an open platform that requires little in the way of raw power to provide users with a full smartphone experience -- perfect for producing phones cheaply.

Some of you may be saying, "I can get an Android device for free, so why would I need B2G"? Here's the thing: that cheap smartphone isn't actually free. The reason why the phone is free is due to subsidies, a distinctly American wireless marketing strategy. In many other parts of the world, carriers do not subsidize phone cost, thus consumers pay full retail price for the phone.